Seems like every HS student now has a weighted GPA. My son goes to a school where all all grades from a C- and above in AP classes are given a one grade boost. So, for example, an A (or 4 towards GPA) becomes a 5 when calculating weighted GPA. What they didn’t explain when my son started HS, is that these weighted GPAs are meaningless when it comes to applying for college. My wife and I both graduated from HS in the mid 80’s. Applying for college was very different at that time and neither of us can recall any talk of weighted vs unweighted GPAs. So, until our son started applying for college, we were unaware that his weighted GPA was really not meaningful.
I understand that colleges look at the strength of the classes a student takes in addition to unweighted GPA. However, that still does not explain why High Schools feel the need to give weighted GPAs other than to boost their ego and the egos of students…well, until the student applies for college that is.
Weighting allows the school to rank students. At many schools there are a whole lot of students who get all A’s. You’d just have a giant tie for #1 if there wasn’t some kind of system to distinguish them.
Now not all schools rank but most do IME.
BTW my high school had weighed grades in the 1980’s. It wasn’t unheard of.
Weighting is used to determine class rank. So if Susie takes a lot of AP classes and gets all A’s , she will have a higher GPA and class rank than Sally who took only regular classes and no AP’s even though she also had all A’s.
Ahhh…I guess that makes sense in regards to the class rank issue. Although, I hope that when colleges look at class rank, they take into account that a kid that is ranked in the top 5% at one school may have a hard time cracking the top 25% at another school.
^ The colleges are well aware that high schools vary in rigor. And additionally, high schools send a copy of the school profile along with the transcript.
It would be nice if there was at least a consistent weighting and overall grading scheme at schools. Our school still counts a 90 and above as an A/4.0, 80 to 89 as a B/3.0, etc. for purposes of unweighted GPA. But when calculating weighted GPA, our school assigns each numeric grade (100, 99, 98, 97, and so on) a GPA point value based upon whether it is an AP, Honors, Accelerated or Academic class. Highest possible point value for AP is 5.3, Honors 5.0, Accelerated 4.5, Academic 4.0.
I know that many other schools consider an A to be 93 or higher. So when using Common Data Set values or coming on to these forums and comparing stats to see if your kid is in the ballpark of other kids who have been accepted to a certain school you can’t necessarily make a fair comparison without knowing how UW GPA is calculated.
Our school avoids the issue of translating to a 4 point scale, by just reporting everything on the 100 point scale. They do say in the high school profile that 90-100 is considered A work. The transcripts have unweighted grades only, the GPA is reported both unweighted and weighted. Only academic courses are in the GPA, but it is a bit confusing as to just what counts as academic.
Our weighting system is really screwy though.
No weight is for the extra slow courses.
x 1.05 is for Regents (college prep)
x 1.10 is for both honors and AP
So effectively the top weighting is only 4.4. Colleges seem to be pretty familiar with the school. At least I have no complaints about where my kids were accepted!
I lived through the transition from unweighted to weighted in the mid 1980’s. The driver at the time was a couple folks gaming the system to become valedictorian by taking no advanced classes, and since the class rank was based on a 100 point scale these kids essentially aced everything. IMO, the weighted system really does not fully fix that issue and does a disservice to kids in vocational programs since they never have a chance to be recognized for academic achievement. After all, without trigonometry there would be no engineering, but without lamps there would be no light.
Love the Breakfast Club quote @DecideSomeHow . One of the reasons I bring up colleges taking into account the differences in acedemic rigor at various schools is because while I believed they did this, I got a different answer when we asked a couple of schools at a college fair we went to last year. When I asked if they did this, I basically got a “It would not be fair to treat students with the same credentials differently based on the school they go to” answer.
Some colleges look at whatever GPA is on your transcript, whether weighted or unweighted, others use only unweighted and still others recalculate using their own formulas. I can understand the need to at least look into the weighted GPAs because they are done in different ways at different schools. At my D’s school, honors and AP courses are weighted an extra 0.5. At my nephew’s school, honors courses are weighted an extra 1.0 and AP courses are weighted an extra 2.0. That’s a big difference. My D’s school doesn’t rank but does do weighting. I’m thankful for that because my oldest went to a school that looked at weighted GPA for scholarships.
At my kids school there are no weighted music classes. There’s AP art but you can’t take that until you’ve already taken several unweighted art classes. They recently added AP art history and my D says it is now the art requirement class of choice because it’s weighted.
My son was in the top level choir for 3 years and it certainly took as much time as some of the easier honors classes. And they performed at an extremely high level.
Didn’t really bother my kids but with the large number of AP and honors classes available and the large number of kids who take as many as possible there’s effectively no way to be near the top of the class if you take art or music every year.
The weighting system used by most schools considers study halls to be more rigorous than any unweighted class, which could include foreign languages or other academic electives. So it’s hard to take the weighted GPAs or class rankings too seriously.
I think Art History would be considered a ‘core’ class in Social Studies at some colleges that re-calculate GPAs. That may be why they have AP level at your school. I wish there was a Marching Band AP class, because I know my D spends more time doing that than any of her ‘real’ APs.
My Ds’s school weights GPA the exact same way the state universities do. Since the state universities publish middle 50% GPA using these ranking it is easy for students to evaluate their match and safety schools for their own GPA.
Weighting GPAs also encourage increasing course rigor (to a degree, but that is another topic). i.e. If a university has a middle 50% GPA that is 4.1 to 4.5, potential applicants know they need to take AP classes to be competitive.
I feel not weighting GPA boosts the ego of students that do not challenge themselves and stick to regular classes and easy electives even though they are making good grades.
That is their job, however, some universities may favor the top 5%er at a poorer or more rural school, feeling that student that has made the most with what was available to them.
“I hope that when colleges look at class rank, they take into account that a kid that is ranked in the top 5% at one school may have a hard time cracking the top 25% at another school.” Perhaps, but you also need to consider that students who go to better schools have a better educational environment and that helps them perform better.
Of course colleges should generally normalize GPA such that a kid on a straight 0.0-4.0 scale without any weighting can be fairly compared to another kid attending a school with significant bonuses for APs and the like.
That said, virtually any way a college might try to compare applicants across schools based on GPA or class rank has difficulties:
Levels of grade curving/inflation may vary widely. School 1 might give As to 30% of the kids, on average, where school 2 might give As to 50% of the kids, even though the kids may be of comparable skills, doing comparable course work.
Student bodies may vary. Even if two schools matched grade curves (i.e. same % of As, Bs, etc assigned), what if school 1 is a selective magnet school, with a high proportion of very bright, ambitious kids, and school 2 is a below average, unchallenging school where only 25% of the kids go on to 4 year colleges?
The interesting thing is that some folks think that colleges should, and DO, assess this situation and reward the kids attending the stronger, tougher school in the second case. Perhaps that’s true. But many of the kids that many colleges go out of their way to recruit and give hooks to - URMs, first gen college, difficult economic or family circumstances, are, I would think, significantly more likely to have attended such H.S.s. So if Elite U wants to raise its % of URMs, first gen college attendees, etc, do they penalize the kid with a 3.7 unweighted GPA, top 5% of their H.S., because that kid’s H.S., and the ‘competition’ (the other kids at the H.S.) were both pretty weak?